If we value democracy, we must protect our right to hold peaceful direct-action protests

Recent disturbing images of police officers wrestling women to the ground and arresting them – whilst attending a vigil to mark the alleged murder of a woman by a policeman – graphically brought home the danger of the proposed new police powers to imprison non-violent protesters for up to ten years for causing a “public nuisance” by way of “serious annoyance”.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will be debated by MPs today and tomorrow – and as a member of Extinction Rebellion, reading it chilled me to the bone.

If we value liberal democracy, we need to understand the history – and true impact – of the attack on peaceful direct-action protests launched by Johnson’s government.

I saw what happened following the Extinction Rebellion climate action at Rupert Murdoch’s printworks at Broxbourne and Liverpool last September: in the two weeks following the protest – in which the Murdoch media empire was accused of having a negative record on climate destruction – Murdoch and his News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks met with the prime minister or his home secretary Priti Patel multiple times.

We don’t know what was discussed, but the government has now delivered on Patel’s promise to crackdown on peaceful direct-action protests in UK – a move that will directly impact on protests by Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, as well as others; because of the “huge inconvenience” these groups reportedly cause.

Having been found to have breached the ministerial code with regards to treating her civil servants “with consideration and respect” (the case has now been dropped after a civil servant received an undisclosed settlement) Patel now appears to be treating supporters of Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, and those protesting male-to-female violence with a similar lack of consideration or respect.

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And this is personal. I have been arrested on a number of occasions for peacefully sitting on the road at protests, calling for the government to halt its policies that are destroying our climate and what is left of nature. I chose to protest out of sheer despair at the continued rise of global carbon emissions.

This bill gives new draconian powers to the police and home secretary to restrict peaceful protests in the UK. The police are to be empowered to determine the location of a protest, the number of people allowed to attend, its starting time, how long it can continue – even the amount of noise it can make.

It also introduces a new criminal offence of “disruption” – caused by peaceful protests – to the wider community, or to affected organisations. Like most crackdowns on democracy, the definition of “disruption” is vague, and is left to the home secretary to define – it also allows for wide interpretation by the police.

As is set out in section 56 of the bill, the maximum penalty for “disruption” is to be a year. And then, in section 59, it gets really serious as it outlines a 10-year penalty conviction, under “public nuisance” provisions, of somebody “obstructing the public or a section of the public in the exercise enjoyment of a right that may be exercised or enjoyed by the public at large”.

We don’t yet know how this may manifest, but it could include, for example: students occupying the public entrance to their university protesting against soaring tuition fees; nurses blocking the road outside the department of health, protesting against the decade-long cuts to their wages; trade unionists obstructing access to a department store protesting against mass “fire and rehire” cuts to their wages and work-conditions.

Fired railway workers, blocking a railway, could face up to 10 years in jail for peaceful civil-disobedience – so, too, could women protesting against violence and street harassment.

The bill would also target Black Lives Matter protests against memorials to slave owners, or racist dead politicians. Up until now, if somebody sprayed “racist” or caused minor damage under £5,000 to such a memorial, they faced up to three months in jail and a maximum fine of £5,000.

However, they are changing this to a shocking 10-year maximum prison sentence and an unlimited fine. In section 46 of the bill, a memorial can be defined as a statue, plaque, garden – or even a tree!

The bill also appears to criminalise the lifestyles of the Roma and Gypsy communities if they set up their encampments without permission – even to the extent of allowing the police to confiscate their caravans and all their property on the site.

These provisions would also potentially criminalise any future fracking, oil or coal protest camps (according to section 60c). There is even a whole section cracking down on the freedom to stage one-person protests!

Almost every human rights movement in history has faced reactionary suppression from the powers-that-be. In the past, these have included the force feeding of hunger-striking suffragettes by the UK government.

Gandhi’s followers, practicing civil disobedience, were slaughtered by British forces when protesting the Rowlett Act. The imperial “authorities” passed this to allow the police to arrest any person in colonial India without reason.

Civil disobedience sit-ins and marches by the black civil rights movement protesting against Jim Crow and segregation, led by Martin Luther King Jr, were repeatedly subjected to police violence and attacks – with King arrested 29 times. Both Gandhi and King paid the ultimate price for their leadership of these peaceful disobedience movements.

This bill would make all of the peaceful protesters in Myanmar, Hong-Kong and Belorussia liable to up 10 years in prison. It also demonstrates that the Tory government despises almost all protests within a liberal democracy.

With most protests having been suppressed by the pandemic, the government has been able to rule without the usual democratic checks and balances that protests provide. The climate movement was already reeling from the onslaught of attacks the government has aimed at climate action over the last few years.

They have poured billions into tax-breaks for petrol, diesel and aviation. They gave the go-ahead to the expansion of UK coal, oil and gas fields – and embarked on a massive road and airport expansion programme.

Meanwhile, the UK government presides over the UN Security Council meetings and the Cop26 climate summit preparations, where they declare a profound “commitment” to tackling the greatest existential threat the world has ever faced.

We now need more mass peaceful direct action than ever – prior to Cop26. Just as the climate and ecological emergencies threaten the future for all of our kids, so this draconian bill threatens the freedoms of all of us, across every section of society.

Gandhi understood the power of peaceful disruptive marches. So maybe we need to follow in his footsteps and organise a great march for truth.

It has fallen to our generation to unite and fight for a truly free press, equality, freedom from racism – and above all, the right for our children to have a future, free from climate genocide and ecocidal destruction.

Let this reactionary bill be a call for action – now.